Lea Nikel painter

Lea Nikel, “Painting is like music, like words… another sentence in the poem”.

Winner of Israel Prize for painting in 1995. With her work of art, she influenced the formulation of the abstract movement in Israeli art and belongs to the second generation of abstract painters.

Her paintings are universal yet subjective. Her manner of work was free of any
conscious and direct reference to any narrative. She believed in the intuitive power of the painting and as modernist action painter Nikel said: “I have taken the color and spread it with my hand. The hand has a part in this color, and so do the body, the eyes, and the senses”…
Nikel: “The homeland of the painter is his/her studio, the place where he/she creates
and paints”.

.
Nikel’s road of life attests her territorial flexibility - she was born in Ukraine in 1918, grew up in Tel Aviv since she was two years old. She studied painting with Gliksberg, Steimatsky and Streichman. To continue her studies she traveled to Paris where she
lived and worked for about a decade, living significant periods in New York, Rome, Jaffa, and Moshav Kidron.
After Nikel’s death the “The Lea Nikel foundation” was set up, seeking to present the artist and her works in Israel and around the world. At the initiative of the foundation and with its financing a Catalogue Raisonné of Nikel’s artworks will be issued. The foundation contributes to projects that support children.